After a lifetime of struggle, I came across Elaine Aron’s research on High Sensory Processing (HSP) and realised that I wasn’t broken, just wired differently. This realisation became the motivation to find a way of living that would support and nurture this sensitivity and my vision includes living in a rural environment away from excess light, noise and pollution and surrounded by a community who is gentle and aware of peoples’ needs.

Over the years I have learnt that my life output is very cyclical – when on an upswing I can be incredibly productive and the opposite when travelling the energetic sine wave downwards. I have some very close friends who have CFS, and when discussing ebbs and flows of energy with them, realised that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is common to the majority of people. Unfortunately, in today’s society we are pushed to maximum output in our working environments which then has a cumulative effect upon family responsibilities, social expectations and ultimately our health and well-being. If a car is driven in top gear with high revs, it burns out the engine, and I realised that that was what has been happening to us all. People with a higher sensitivity to this pressure and less tolerance were struggling, becoming ill and frequently developing long term conditions because of the stresses and demands placed upon ourselves. 

My ideal would be to live in a community where people are not defined by ‘conditions’ nor the energy they have to contribute, but where everybody’s emotional, physical and mental resources are respected and supported in a caring environment, and where a collective ‘energy pool’ was kept topped up by the members as and when they are able to contribute with recourse to using outside physical input if practical tasks needed a helping hand.

I truly believe that if we plant people in the correct ‘soil’, then we can all thrive and grow together to create a way of living together that is effective, inclusive, loving and gentle.